Abstract

Abstract

Introduction

While the Resuscitation Council (2005) support witnessed resuscitation it is still under debate in the literature and is not policy in all paediatric hospitals. The arguments for and against the practice differ greatly to those in adults and therefore specific research is needed. Healthcare professionals have mixed views on the practice; however it is also important to look at the views of parents.

Methodology

Electronic searches of PubMed, CINAHL and OVID were performed, with a manual search of the reference lists of retrieved articles. Only primary studies looking at parents views of witnessed resuscitation in children were included. Of 1038 articles, 937 were excluded after title review and 44 after reviewing the abstract. From the remaining 57, eight articles were found that met the inclusion criteria. These included both qualitative and quantitative studies.

Results

Three studies looked at hypothetical views of parents, two looked at parents with children in the Emergency Department, two looked at parents with children in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit and one was a case study. Whether parents wanted to be present, the benefits and detrimental effects are explored in order to determine whether witnessed resuscitation helps parents come to terms with the death of their child.

Conclusion

Out of the 1,253 parents in hypothetical scenarios, 87.1% would want to be present. All but one parent in all studies believes witnessing resuscitation should be the parent’s choice. All but one parent who was present would do so again. There are detrimental effects but these are outweighed by the benefits. Correct support needs to be given to parents whatever their choice and policies need to be in place to support witnessed resuscitation. More research is needed to find the long term outcomes of witnessed resuscitation as no Randomised Controlled Trials have been completed.